Help me pick a new SoD Laptop

Silosobi

Silosobi

Dalayan Pious Diety
So my 4 year old Laptop made me miss today's raid and that is just not acceptable. I'm now looking around to potentially buy a new machine. I'm decent with making computers work, but don't know a lot about what I should look for if picking a machine primarily for playing SoD. One main concern is that I know certain memory cards have graphical problems with the EQ client so any help I get get in picking a card that will run SoD without error would be great.

Here are some of the laptops I've been looking at:

Latitude E5500

Genuine Windows 7 Professional
Latitude E5500 Laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo T9550 (2.66GHz, 6M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
320 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
4 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)
8X DVD +/- RW Optical Drive
Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD


Latitude E6510

Processor: Intel Core i5-560M (2.66GHz Turbo Boost 3.33Ghz Dual Core/4 Threads 3MB L3 cache)
Genuine Windows 7 Professional
Latitude E6510 Laptop
160 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
4 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz (2 DIMMs)
8X DVD +/- RW Drive
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD


Latitude E6520

Processor: Intel Core i5-2540M (2.60GHz, 3MB Cache)
Genuine Windows 7 Professional
Latitude E6520
250 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
4 GB DDR3 ECC SDRAM 1333MHz (2 DIMMs)
8X DVD +/- RW Drive
Nvidia NVS 4200M 512MB DDR3 Discrete Graphics

I'm kind of a fan of Dell latitudes because they are affordable and have always run well with good tech support, but if anyone thinks I really should look at another brand tell me why. I know I hear people say "the Nvidia graphics bug" with some frequency. Is this from some specific cards or should all Nvidia cards be avoided if SoD is my goal?

Any input would be appreciated! Help me get back to slaying dragons ASAP!
 
I guess my main question at this time is the NVIDIA vs Intel Graphics card. My old card was NVIDIA and ran with minimal problems, but I don't ever remember people mentioning any problems with Intel cards. Obviously the NVIDIA is a better card if I want to run games beyond SoD, but I really don't intend to do that. Just for SoD use, do people think the Intel card would be a better pick?
 
Basically, the issue with nvidia cards is the client was compiled with support for Direct X 6. The current version of DX doesn't support those features so you see tearing in certain circumstances. The client is also not smp aware which is why you need to bind the process to a specific processor.

Intel vs Nvidia - An nvidia chip will give you better graphics acceleration and fps then any intel chip unless the nvidia is really old or at the commodity bottom of their current product line. There are also hacks that are supposed to fix the graphics bug, that you can search for in this forum. No, i havent done them because I use linux which uses opengl and that library has no problem with[ tearing.

By and large Dell is fine. You might want to take a look at some of the Asus laptops which come in all prices and I have had good experience with except for one power supply. Because of the way dell is set up, future support will be easier if there is a problem with the laptop. Though I havent needed any yet with asus.
I have used a lot of dells in the past though and liked that part of experience.
 
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